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Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

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Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#151

Post by Bukhmanizer »

eightysixfour wrote: post #55
loveistheanswer wrote: post #23

Judging by the comments in this thread, it seems a lot of people are still unaware that: 1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural" 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the possibility of a…

I feel like people are doing a poor job distinguishing between "engineered" and "leaked." There is, from my understanding, reasonable evidence to conclude the virus was not engineered from the perspective of "we took genes from one virus and moved them to this virus," but there's no evidence disproving the idea that it was the result of gain of function research. My personal feeling is that these statements are true:…

My personal feelings are that all 3 are possible, but approximately 0.0001% of people will actually consider the likelihood of each one, but rather, most will choose whichever one is most convenient and comfortable to believe in.

Of course as an Asian person, whatever people believe in will have a direct impact on me. I remember after 9/11, the amount of awful things that were said and done to the Sikh population in my city. It didn’t matter they had literally nothing to do with the attacks. People were angry and wanted someone to blame.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#152

Post by allemagne »

loveistheanswer wrote: post #23

Judging by the comments in this thread, it seems a lot of people are still unaware that: 1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural" 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the possibility of a…

This top comment and the thread caused by posting it actually seems to be the main source of heated discussions about whether lab leak suggestions are xenophobic or not.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#153

Post by rsync »

Once again, I will ask for (what I believe is) an interesting piece of context ...

How many labs like this one are there in the world ? Are there 20,000 of them ? Are there 7 ?

Of the labs like this one in the world, how many of them are doing GoF research on coronaviruses ? 1200 of them ? 1 of them ?

This won't be conclusive but given the reasonable heuristics that I work with, having a sense of these proportions would go a long way ...

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#154

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

gfodor wrote: post #57
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wuhan is a gigantic city, bigger than NYC. You'll be able to find an example of nearly anything in any category there. But it's also completely unsurprising they were researching the coronavirus category: the 2003 SARS outbreak was a coronavirus too, and obviously motivated an incredible amount of research across the world, but particularly in China.

You're flipping the condition on the probability here.

Yes, quite deliberately.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#155

Post by cthalupa »

hnbad wrote: post #119
cthalupa wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't equivalent, and it's not even solely a factor of sanitation. You are keeping tons of live animals in cages in close proximity to each other and tons of people. Stress is extremely effective at weakening immune response, which makes it easier for pathogens to replicate, jump hosts, and jump species. Now the pathogen is an a different environment, which begins to force adaptation, which is to say the pathog…

I've been to "fish markets" in Germany that kept live animals (mostly poultry and rabbits) in cages in close proximity to each other and tons of people. Just because it's uncommon or illegal in the US doesn't mean it's exotic or unusual in the rest of the world. We only freak out about "wet markets" because 1) the name sounds gross (but it's catchier than "perishable goods street market", I guess) and 2) orientalism.

If the wet markets in china were just poultry and rabbits, it would not be an issue. We have a good understanding of the potential zoonotic diseases from those vectors.

We - including China - do not have a good understanding of the potential zoonotic diseases from the large variety of wild game that is captured and sold in these markets.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#156

Post by lamontcg »

> The virus does have an inexplicable feature: a so-called “furin cleavage site” in the spike protein that helps SARS-CoV-2 pry its way into human cells. While such sites are present in some coronaviruses, they haven’t been found in any of SARS-CoV-2’s closest known relatives.

This is false. First of all it should be stated clearer that there has been parallel evolution across several branches of coronaviruses which have independently evolved a furin cleavage site (so there is evolutionary pressure and advantage for coronaviruses to follow this path):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...

And then the statement is just wrong. The related sarbecoviruses found in Thailand have similar furin cleavage sites:

> The RacCS203 S gene is most similar to that of RmYN02 (Supplementary Fig. 3a). The two viruses shared part of the furin cleavage site unique to SARS-CoV-2 (Supplementary Fig. 3b) and have an almost identical RBD aa sequence with only two residue differences out of 204 aa residues

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#157

Post by dhimes »

modzu wrote: post #12
dhimes wrote: post #9

The only issue here is that lab safety protocols may have to be tightened up in the lab responsible. Scientists mutate things in the lab all the time in order to have a tool for effective study. If this came from a lab, then it would be the same thing (not some sort of weapon, like the hysterical Right wants people to believe). Most believe that it didn't, but rather that it was in the human population a few months b…

i'm curious what you would add to biosafety level 4 to tighten it up? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_leve...

I didn't hear that it was a level 4 lab. Those are for the viruses deemed most severe. Plenty of work goes on at other labs- at least in the US. Not sure about China.

Maybe you can enlighten me.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#158

Post by devit »

modzu wrote: post #12
dhimes wrote: post #9

The only issue here is that lab safety protocols may have to be tightened up in the lab responsible. Scientists mutate things in the lab all the time in order to have a tool for effective study. If this came from a lab, then it would be the same thing (not some sort of weapon, like the hysterical Right wants people to believe). Most believe that it didn't, but rather that it was in the human population a few months b…

i'm curious what you would add to biosafety level 4 to tighten it up? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_leve...

Only allowing robots and disallowing all human presence in the lab.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#159

Post by neilparikh »

lurquer wrote: post #148
s5300 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this incorrectly and misinterpreting... But Asian hate crimes are waaay up since the beginning of Covid-19 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684 Do you not call this xenophobia? It would be my elementary understanding that this rise in hate crime against Asians may be related to the President of the U.S. aggressively referring to the virus as the "china virus" and broadcasting…

Strange how Asian is equated with Chinese. How insulting. It’s often the typical virtue-signaling liberals who group disparate languages, races, religions, and cultures in one monolithic block. What do you mean by Asian that would encourage one to use the term synonymously with “Chinese”? Are you referring to “people with slanty eyes”? White urban liberals do this a lot... to them, all “brown” people are the same. A…

News articles are not equating Chinese and Asian.

It seems very obvious to me that those doing racist hate crimes aren't going to ask their victims if they're Chinese or not before attacking them, so you'd see an uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes in general, not just anti-Chinese hate crimes, and so it makes sense to talk about anti-Asian hate crimes as a whole.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#160

Post by mywittyname »

lurquer wrote: post #148
s5300 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this incorrectly and misinterpreting... But Asian hate crimes are waaay up since the beginning of Covid-19 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684 Do you not call this xenophobia? It would be my elementary understanding that this rise in hate crime against Asians may be related to the President of the U.S. aggressively referring to the virus as the "china virus" and broadcasting…

Strange how Asian is equated with Chinese. How insulting. It’s often the typical virtue-signaling liberals who group disparate languages, races, religions, and cultures in one monolithic block. What do you mean by Asian that would encourage one to use the term synonymously with “Chinese”? Are you referring to “people with slanty eyes”? White urban liberals do this a lot... to them, all “brown” people are the same. A…

My best friend is from Vietnam. He's face harassment in public for "being Chinese" since Covid started. I've seen it first-hand a few times. One of which, the instigators were clearly planning to escalate until they saw the company he keeps (very fit, very tired of this shit guys).

So yeah, it's fair to say that the racist assholes engaging in this harassment don't care where you're from. It doesn't matter if your a 9th generation American. If you "look Chinese" that's a convenient enough excuse for them to start shit.

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